The World map terrain

This has been making me day dream since a few days now.
In the beginning it had been said (and has been repeated recently sometime) that CA is using some satellite thingy to create an authentic world map, with real world features, that would be shown on real time battlefields too........if this is true, it's perhaps the most exciting thing that can happen to a TW game..........real world terrain on the battle map!!!! It is just too good to be true!

This also gives rise to a load of other points, it'll mean real forests and realistic river deltas........it will also mean that there'll have to be some new system as to how armies would cross mountain ranges, and how would battlefields in those regions would be depicted..........I mean Afghanistan and areas to its East, like Northern India and all, and studded with peaks.........what effect will this have on the world map and the battle map? The locals used this for guerrilla warfare, does this mean it'll affect army LOS on the world map?

Also this'll mean we'll be seeing lot more water on the battle map.........small streams, river tributaries are in abundance, and such water played big role in warfare I believe......

More imagination than facts I know, and perhaps imagination too wild to be true but still, nothing wrong it dreaming and hoping :2thumbsup: :beam:

Wow..................not a single reply :sweatdrop: ...........or confirmation............did no one else read about this? It was in one the Sega overviews I believe.

Is there going to be a curvature as well?

The way the screen shots looked to me, it seems like there's going to be several "world maps", not one contiguous one. Do we have any details on this? I'm still catching up on the last month or two of info.

Actually, all I remember understanding was that we get realistic terrain, corresponding to its original counterpart.
I'll try and search for that article.

My understanding is simply that they have used NASA height maps for creating the campaign map rather than a manually created one.

Thats something that most of the RTW mods have been doing for some time, though I get the impression that the Empire engine allows much higher quality height maps to be used than was practical on the Rome engine.

Also it looks like there will be a lot more in the way of terrain/climate types & some of that may come from satelite data too, presumably with manual alteration from research into changes since the game period.